During the UAR-era, Jadid was stationed in Cairo, Egypt. Jadid established the Military Committee alongside other Ba'athists in 1959. The chief aim of the Military Committee was to protect the UAR's existence. In the beginning there was only four members of the Military Committee, the others were Hafez al-Assad, Abd al-Karim al-Jundi and Muhammad Umran.[5] The Military Committee also tried to save the Syrian Ba'ath movement from annihilation. Committee members were among those who blamed Aflaq for the Ba'ath Party's failing during the UAR years.[6] The party's Third National Congress in 1959 supported Aflaq's decision to dissolve the party, but a 1960 National Congress, in which Jadid was a delegate representing the then-unknown Military Committee, reversed the decision and called for the Ba'ath Party's reestablishment. The Congress also decided to improve relations with Nasser by democratising the UAR from within. A faction within the party, led by al-Hawrani, called for Syria's secession.[7] The Military Committee did not succeed in its aims, and in September 1961 the UAR was dissolved. Nazim al-Qudsi, who led the first post-UAR government, persecuted Jadid and the others for their Nasserite loyalties, and all of them were forced to retire from the Syrian Army.[5]

While Jadid remained away from public view, as the second secretary of the Ba'ath Party, men allied to him filled the top posts in state and army: Nureddin al-Atassi, as party chairman, state president and later prime minister; Yousuf Zouayyen, as prime minister; Ibrahim Makhous as foreign minister, Hafez al-Assad as defense minister; Abd al-Karim al-Jundi, as security chief. Many of these men were Alawis (e.g. all of the above except Atassi, Jundi, and Zouayyen, who were Sunni), giving the government a sectarian character. Several were military men, and all belonged on the Ba'ath Party's left wing.

Under Jadid's rule, Syria aligned itself with the Soviet bloc and pursued hardline policies towards Israel and "reactionary" Arab states especially Saudi Arabia, calling for the mobilization of a "people's war" against Zionism rather than inter-Arab military alliances. Domestically, Jadid attempted a socialist transformation of Syrian society at a forced pace, creating unrest and economic difficulties. Opponents of the government were harshly suppressed, while the Ba'ath Party replaced parliament as law-making body and other parties were banned. Public support for his government, such as it was, declined sharply following Syria's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Golan Heights, and as a result of the troubled internal conditions of the country.

After the war, in particular, tensions began to increase between Jadid's followers and those who argued that the situation called for a more moderate stance on socialism and international relations. This group coalesced around Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad, who protested the "adventurism" of Jadid, and demanded a normalization of the internal situation by adopting a permanent constitution, liberalizing the economy, and mending ties with non-Ba'athist groups, as well as the external situation, by seeking an alliance with conservative Arab states such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While Jadid retained the allegiance of most of the civilian Ba'ath apparatus, Assad as defense minister gradually asserted control over the military wing of the party. In 1969, Assad purged several Jadid loyalists, and from that point on Jadid had lost his preeminence in the state.

In 1970, when conflict erupted between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Jordanian army, Jadid sent Syrian-controlled Palestinian troops of the nominally PLO-run Palestine Liberation Army, based in Syria, into Jordan in order to help the PLO. This action was not supported by Assad's more pragmatic Ba'ath faction, and the troops withdrew. The action helped trigger the simmering conflict between Jadid's and Assad's wings of the Ba'ath Party and army. The Syrian communist party aligned itself with Salah Jadid. The Soviet ambassador, Nuritdin Mukhitdinov was drawn in the power struggle. Hafez al Assad was angered by the meddling in Syrian politics by the Soviet Union, so he decided to scare the Soviets by sending Mustafa Tlass to Beijing to procure arms and wave Chairman Mao's little Red Book.[8] In November 1970, Jadid attempted to fire Assad and his supporter Mustafa Tlass, which in turn caused Assad to launch an intra-party coup against Jadid, dubbed the Corrective Movement. Jadid was arrested on 13 November 1970, and remained in the Mezzeh prison in Damascus until his death,[3] while al-Assad would remain in power until his death in 2000. Jadid died of a heart attack in a hospital on 19 August 1993.[9]

1.
Amin al-Hafiz
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Amin al-Hafiz was a Syrian politician, General and member of the Baath Party. Al-Hafiz was born in the city of Aleppo and his first main political role was in 1958, as a Brigadier and leader of a Syrian Army delegation that visited Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president. The two states merged into one United Arab Republic in February that year, and al-Hafiz was posted to Cairo. The union crumbled after a Syrian uprising in September 1961, the 1963 Syrian coup détat led by the Military Committee introduced Hafiz to public life. In the aftermath of the coup the National Council of the Revolutionary Command became the supreme organ. The NCRC was dominated by the Syrian branch of the radical, Hafiz became President, instituted socialist reforms and oriented his country towards the Eastern Bloc. The details of Eli Cohen and his operations are impossible to verify. In any case Al-Hafiz himself rebutted and denied the allegations of his stature within the Syrian military or political sphere, allegedly, during his exile in Buenos Aires, Hafez befriended a supposed Lebanese trader named Kamal Amin Thaabet, an allegation which he flatly denied. According to Hafez, he never met Cohen in Argentina and his account was that Cohen was a socialite who befriended officers in the Syrian Army but was never a part of the military in any official capacity. Generally, the importance of the intelligence provided to the Israelis was greatly exaggerated, Thaabet was actually an Egyptian-born Israeli Mossad agent, Eli Cohen. Thaabet/Cohen arrived in Syria in early 1962, a year before Hafez’s return, as president, Hafez groomed Thaabet/Cohen to be a future defence minister and possibly even his successor, an allegation which he also flatly denied and challenged. Hafez invited Thaabet/Cohen to functions and gave him tours of secret fortifications in the Golan Heights, when Cohen was revealed as a spy in January 1965, Hafez personally interrogated him and ordered the arrest of 500 of his highly placed friends. Despite international pleas for clemency, Hafez had Cohen publicly hanged in Damascus, on 23 February 1966, he was overthrown by a radical Baathist faction headed by Chief of Staff Salah Jadid. A late warning telegram of the coup détat was sent from President Nasser to Nasim al-Safarjalani, jadids supporters were also seen as more radically left-wing. But the coup was supported and led by officers from Syrias religious minorities, especially the Alawite Muslims. Alawis have ruled Syria ever since, a year later he was relocated to Baghdad. After the fall of Saddam in the Iraq War of 2003 and he died in Aleppo on December 17,2009, reports of his age differ, but he was believed to be in his late 80s. He received a state sponsored funeral

2.
Nureddin al-Atassi
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Noureddin Mustafa Ali al-Atassi was President of Syria from February 1966 to November 1970. Atassi was born in Homs in 1929 to the famous Al Atassi family, Atassi was a medical doctor by training, and in that capacity aided the Algerian forces against the French in the Algerian War of Independence. Though a long-time ideologue of the powerful Baath Party Atassi became its General Secretary as well as President of the Republic in 1966 and he was considered to be largely a ceremonial figurehead, with real power vested in the Deputy General Secretary, Salah Jadid. In 1970, he was deposed along with Salah Jadid in a coup by Hafez al-Assad, Atassi was put under house arrest without trial. Then he was transferred to the Mezze military prison in Damascus where he lived from 1970 to 1992, after 22-year imprisonment, he was released and flown to Paris to receive medical treatment in France on 22 November 1992, and died at a hospital in December 1992

3.
Syrian Army
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The Syrian Army, officially the Syrian Arab Army, is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. The Syrian Army originated in military forces formed by the French after World War I. It officially came into being in 1945, before Syria obtained full independence the following year, since 1946, it has played a major role in Syrias governance, mounting five military coups, and in 1954,1963,1966, and 1970. It has fought four wars with Israel and one with Jordan, an armored division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Persian Gulf War, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 it was the pillar of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. In 1919, the French formed the Troupes spéciales du Levant as part of the Army of the Levant in the French Mandate for Syria, the former with 8,000 men later grew into both the Syrian and Lebanese armies. This force was used primarily as auxiliaries in support of French troops, as Syria gained independence in 1946, its leaders envisioned a division-sized army. The 1st Brigade was ready by the time of the Syrian war against Israel on May 15,1948 and it consisted of two infantry battalions and one armored battalion. The 2nd Brigade was organized during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and also included two battalions and one armored battalion. At the time of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the army was small, poorly armed, paris had relied primarily on French regulars to keep the peace in Syria and had neglected indigenous forces. Consequently, training was lackadaisical, discipline lax, and staff work almost unheard of, there were about 12,000 men in the Syrian army. These troops were grouped into three infantry brigades and an armored force of about battalion size writes Pollack. Between 1948 and 1967, a series of military coups destroyed the stability of the government, in March 1949, the chief of staff, General Husni al-Zaim, installed himself as president. Two more military dictators followed by December 1949, General Adib Shishakli then held power until deposed in the 1954 Syrian coup detat. Further coups followed, each attended by a purge of the corps to remove supporters of the losers from the force. Discipline in the army broke down across the board as units and their commanders pledged their allegiance to different groups and parties. Indeed, by the late 1950s, the situation had become so bad that Syrian officers regularly disobeyed the orders of superiors who belonged to different ethnic or political groups writes Pollack. The 1963 Syrian coup détat had as one of its key objectives the seizure of the Al-Kiswah military camp, there was another 1966 Syrian coup detat

4.
Ziad al-Hariri
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Mohammed Ziad al-Hariri was a prominent Syrian Army officer. He retired from political activity soon afterward, Hariri was born to a Sunni Muslim family from the town of Hama in 1930. His father was a landowner in nearby Homs, and was sympathetic to the politics of the communist national leader Khalid al-Azm. Hariris brother was also sympathetic to communism and was a known poet in Syria. Hariris brother-in-law was the prominent Arab socialist politician Akram al-Hawrani, who was also a Hama native, Hariri entered the Homs Military Academy in the early 1950s and became an officer in the Syrian Army in 1954, during the presidency of Adib al-Shishakli. During this period he became active in the growing pan-Arabist movement led by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hariri supported the formation of the United Arab Republic in February 1958. Along with many other Syrian officers, he was sent to be stationed in Egypt and he would later state that he felt he and his comrades were in an inferior position and we did not know why. After the unions breakup in 1961, following a secessionist coup in Syria, at the time, Hariri, a staff colonel, had been reassigned to commander of the army on the southern front with Israel. It was both a title and a strategic post as Hariri headed the largest concentration of Syrian troops in the country. Should the coup attempt fail, the committee guaranteed Hariri could disown them, when Azm did nominate him for the position, Hariri refused and was accused of being a rebel by the government. Hariri accepted the Military Committees offer and on the night of 7–8 March 1963, he played a prominent role in the toppling of Qudsi, Hariris troops installed barricades blocking strategic roads in the city, and besieged several government buildings, including the main post office. By the morning of 8 March, the coup was completed with no blood spilled. Syria expert Patrick Seale referred to Hariri as the chief coup maker, Hariri was promoted to Major-General, became a member of the Revolutionary Command Council that governed the country and, as planned, was appointed the armys chief of staff. To Hariris chagrin, the Military Committee became the power in Syria instead of Hariri serving as the countrys strongman. Under the committees influence, the RCC appointed officer Luay al-Atassi as president, Hariri had taken part in the negotiations in Cairo. Towards the end of April, dozens of Nasserist officers were purged from the army, prompting the resignation of six Nasserist RCC members, or half the council, the sidelining of the Nasserists, including Defense Minister Muhammad al-Sufi, resulted in Hariris acquisition of the defense ministry portfolio. Together with his position as chief of staff, the defense ministry post gave Hariri highly strategic control over the army and this was seen as a major impediment to the Military Committees plans to consolidate unchecked power in the armed forces. Hariri had been sent to Algeria on 19 June with a delegation, including Bitar, Aflaq and Education Minister Sami Droubi

5.
Latakia Governorate
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Latakia Governorate is one of the fourteen governorates of Syria. It is situated in western Syria, bordering Turkey and its reported area varies in different sources from 2,297 km² to 2,437 km². The governorate has a population of 991,000, members of the Alawite sect form a majority in the governorate, although Armenians, Turkmen, and Sunni Arabs form the majorities in the Kessab, Jabal Turkman, and Jabal al-Akrad regions respectively. The capital of Latakia had, by 2010 estimates,400,000 inhabitants, 50% of whom were Alawites, 30% were Sunni, the governorate was historically part of the Alawite State, which existed from 1920–1936. The city of Latakia was the capital of the state, the region has been relatively peaceful since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. However, the Syrian rebels have had a consistent presence in the northeastern mountains, the governorate is divided into four districts, Al-Haffah Jableh Latakia Qardaha These are further divided into 22 sub-districts. East of the plains, the governorate is covered by the An-Nusayriyah Mountains. Latakia is traversed by the line of equal latitude and longitude

6.
French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon
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The Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was a League of Nations mandate founded after the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire concerning Syria and the Lebanon. The mandate system was supposed to differ from colonialism, with the country acting as a trustee until the inhabitants would be able to stand on their own. At that point, the mandate would terminate and an independent state would be born, Hatay was annexed by Turkey in 1939. The French mandate lasted until 1943, when two independent countries emerged, Syria and Lebanon, French troops completely left Syria and Lebanon in 1946. Faisal established the first new postwar Arab government in Damascus in October 1918, the new Arab administration formed local governments in the major Syrian cities, and the pan-Arab flag was raised all over Syria. The Arabs hoped, with faith in earlier British promises, that the new Arab state would all the Arab lands stretching from Aleppo in northern Syria to Aden in southern Yemen. However, in accordance with the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement between Britain and France, General Allenby assigned to the Arab administration only the regions of Syria. Palestine was reserved for the British, on 8 October, French troops disembarked in Beirut and occupied the Lebanese coastal region south to Naqoura, replacing British troops there. The French immediately dissolved the local Arab governments in the region, France demanded full implementation of the Sykes–Picot Agreement, with Syria under its control. On 26 November 1919, British forces withdrew from Damascus to avoid confrontation with the French, Faisal had traveled several times to Europe, since November 1918, trying to convince France and Britain to change their positions, but without success. Frances determination to intervene in Syria was shown by the naming of General Henri Gouraud as high commissioner in Syria and Cilicia, at the Paris Peace Conference, Faisal found himself in an even weaker position when the European powers decided to ignore the Arab demands. In May 1919, elections were held for the Syrian National Congress, 80% of seats went to conservatives. However, the minority included dynamic Arab nationalist figures such as Jamil Mardam Bey, Shukri al-Kuwatli, Ahmad al-Qadri, Ibrahim Hanano, the head was moderate nationalist Hashim al-Atassi. In June 1919, the American King–Crane Commission arrived in Syria to inquire into local public opinion about the future of the country, the commissions remit extended from Aleppo to Beersheba. They visited 36 major cities, met more than 2,000 delegations from more than 300 villages. Their conclusions confirmed the opposition of Syrians to the mandate in their country as well as to the Balfour Declaration, the conclusions of the commission were rejected by France and ignored by Britain. Unrest erupted in Syria when Faisal accepted a compromise with French Prime Minister Clemenceau, anti-Hashemite demonstrations broke out, and Muslim inhabitants in and around Mount Lebanon revolted in fear of being incorporated into a new, mainly Christian, state of Greater Lebanon. A part of Frances claim to territories in the Levant was that France was a protector of the minority Christian communities

7.
Damascus
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Damascus is the capital and likely the largest city of Syria, following the decline in population of Aleppo due to the ongoing battle for the city. It is commonly known in Syria as ash-Sham and nicknamed as the City of Jasmine, in addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major cultural and religious centre of the Levant. The city has an population of 1,711,000 as of 2009. Located in south-western Syria, Damascus is the centre of a metropolitan area of 2.6 million people. The Barada River flows through Damascus, first settled in the second millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. After the victory of the Abbasid dynasty, the seat of Islamic power was moved to Baghdad, Damascus saw a political decline throughout the Abbasid era, only to regain significant importance in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Today, it is the seat of the government and all of the government ministries. The name of Damascus first appeared in the geographical list of Thutmose III as T-m-ś-q in the 15th century BC, the etymology of the ancient name T-m-ś-q is uncertain, but it is suspected to be pre-Semitic. It is attested as Dimašqa in Akkadian, T-ms-ḳw in Egyptian, Dammaśq in Old Aramaic, the Akkadian spelling is found in the Amarna letters, from the 14th century BC. Later Aramaic spellings of the name include a intrusive resh, perhaps influenced by the root dr. Thus, the English and Latin name of the city is Damascus which was imported from originated from the Qumranic Darmeśeq, and Darmsûq in Syriac, meaning a well-watered land. In Arabic, the city is called Dimašqu š-Šāmi, although this is shortened to either Dimašq or aš-Šām by the citizens of Damascus, of Syria and other Arab neighbours. Aš-Šām is an Arabic term for Levant and for Syria, the latter, the Anti-Lebanon mountains mark the border between Syria and Lebanon. The range has peaks of over 10,000 ft. and blocks precipitation from the Mediterranean sea, however, in ancient times this was mitigated by the Barada River, which originates from mountain streams fed by melting snow. Damascus is surrounded by the Ghouta, irrigated farmland where many vegetables, cereals, maps of Roman Syria indicate that the Barada river emptied into a lake of some size east of Damascus. Today it is called Bahira Atayba, the hesitant lake, because in years of severe drought it does not even exist, the modern city has an area of 105 km2, out of which 77 km2 is urban, while Jabal Qasioun occupies the rest. The old city of Damascus, enclosed by the city walls, to the south-east, north and north-east it is surrounded by suburban areas whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages, Midan in the south-west, Sarouja and Imara in the north and north-west. These neighbourhoods originally arose on roads leading out of the city and these new neighbourhoods were initially settled by Kurdish soldiery and Muslim refugees from the European regions of the Ottoman Empire which had fallen under Christian rule

8.
Syria
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Syrias capital and largest city is Damascus. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, Sunni Arabs make up the largest religious group in Syria. Its capital Damascus and largest city Aleppo are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, in the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The post-independence period was tumultuous, and a number of military coups. In 1958, Syria entered a union with Egypt called the United Arab Republic. Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963 to 2011, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens, Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1970 to 2000. Mainstream modern academic opinion strongly favours the argument that the Greek word is related to the cognate Ἀσσυρία, Assyria, in the past, others believed that it was derived from Siryon, the name that the Sidonians gave to Mount Hermon. However, the discovery of the inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria. The area designated by the word has changed over time, since approximately 10,000 BC, Syria was one of centers of Neolithic culture where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period is represented by houses of Mureybet culture. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gyps, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations. Cities of Hamoukar and Emar played an important role during the late Neolithic, archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth, perhaps preceded by only those of Mesopotamia. The earliest recorded indigenous civilisation in the region was the Kingdom of Ebla near present-day Idlib, gifts from Pharaohs, found during excavations, confirm Eblas contact with Egypt. One of the earliest written texts from Syria is an agreement between Vizier Ibrium of Ebla and an ambiguous kingdom called Abarsal c.2300 BC. The Northwest Semitic language of the Amorites is the earliest attested of the Canaanite languages, Mari reemerged during this period, and saw renewed prosperity until conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon. Ugarit also arose during this time, circa 1800 BC, close to modern Latakia, Ugaritic was a Semitic language loosely related to the Canaanite languages, and developed the Ugaritic alphabet. The Ugarites kingdom survived until its destruction at the hands of the marauding Indo-European Sea Peoples in the 12th century BC, Yamhad was described in the tablets of Mari as the mightiest state in the near east and as having more vassals than Hammurabi of Babylon. Yamhad imposed its authority over Alalakh, Qatna, the Hurrians states, the army of Yamhad campaigned as far away as Dēr on the border of Elam

9.
Ba'ath Party
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Zakī al-Arsūzī was a Syrian philosopher, philologist, sociologist, historian, and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Baathism and he published several books during his lifetime, most notably The Genius of Arabic in its Tongue. Born into a family in Latakia, Syria, al-Arsuzi studied at the Sorbonne. In 1930, he returned to Syria, where he became a member of the League of National Action in 1933, in 1938, he moved to Damascus because of his disillusionment with party work, and in 1939, he left the LNA. In Damascus al-Arsuzi established and headed a group consisting of mostly secondary school pupils who would often discuss European history, nationalism, shortly after leaving the LNA, al-Arsuzi established the Arab National Party, an Arab nationalist party with a defined creed. In 1947, the two merged, forming a single Arab Baath Party. Despite the merger, Al-Arsuzi neither attended its founding conference nor was given membership, during the rest of the 1940s and 1950s, al-Arsuzi stayed out of politics and worked as a teacher. He made a comeback during the 1960s power struggle in the Baath Party between Aflaq and al-Bitar on one hand and Salah Jadid and Hafiz al-Assad on the other. When Aflaq and al-Bitar lost the struggle and were forced to escape from Syria in 1966. The key to Arab unification, according to al-Arsuzi, is through language, in contrast to the Latin language, al-Arsuzi argued, Arabic was far less arbitrary and far more intuitive. Despite his contributions to Baathist thought, al-Arsuzi is barely mentioned in Western or Arab scholarship and this omission may be linked to the fact that Sati al-Husri, a contemporary Arab nationalist, had many of the same ideas as al-Arsuzi but was better able to articulate them. Zaki al-Arsuzi was born in 1900 or 1901 to a family of Alawi origins in Latakia on the Syrian coast of the Ottoman Empire. His mother, Maryam came from a prominent religious family, while his father, with his two brothers, one sister and his parents moved to Antioch in 1904. Arsuzi began his studies at a kuttab where he memorised the Quran, four years later, his parents enrolled him into a rüşdiye to give him a proper Ottoman education. His father was arrested by Ottoman authorities in 1915 for nationalist activities and his father was imprisoned for a short period before he and his family were sent to internal exile in the Anatolian city of Konya. After a year in exile, Najib and his family were allowed to back to Antioch. According to Arsuzi, his father replaced the Ottoman flag with the Hashemite flag on the Antioch government house upon hearing the news that Faisal I of Iraq had entered Damascus and this however, was never independently verified. In the aftermath of World War I, Arsuzi began studying at Institut Laïc in Lebanon and it was here that Arsuzi was introduced to philosophy

10.
Ba'ath Party (Syrian-dominated faction)
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The Arab Socialist Baath Party, also referred to as the pro-Syrian Baath movement, is a neo-Baathist political party, with branches across the Arab world. The party emerged from a split in the Baath Party in February 1966, the party leads the government in Syria. From 1970 until 2000, the party was led by the Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, as of 2000, leadership has been shared between his son Bashar al-Assad and Abdullah al-Ahmar. The Syrian branch of the party is the largest organisation within the Syrian-led Baath Party, Hafez al-Assad became the secretary of the Syrian Regional Command of the party in 1970, and Secretary General of the National Command in late 1970. Despite being deceased, Hafez al-Assad is still the official Secretary General of the National Command, Bashar al-Assad became the Regional Secretary of the party in Syria after his fathers death in 2000. Abdullah al-Ahmar serves as the Assistant Secretary General of the National Command, the highest organ of the party is the Party Congress. The Congress elects a General Secretary and a National Command, under the National Command there is a Regional Command for each state in which the party operates. The regions are divided into branches, which are divided into companies, a branch consists of two or more companies. A company comprises three to seven cells, each cell has between three and seven members. In theory, the National Command of the party is the government for the entire Arab nation. The body comprises 21 members, half of whom are Syrian, in practice, the Syrian Regional Command is the more powerful institution inside the party. The Syrian Regional Command is the political leadership in Syria. A seat in National Command has become a sinecure, an honorary post given to Syrian politicians as they retire from political life. Hafez al-Assad rarely had time to attend National Command meetings, instead, he appointed Vice President for Party Affairs Zuhayr Mashariqa or Abd al-Halim Khaddam to represent him at National Command meetings. There is a branch in Algeria. There is a branch in Bahrain. There is a branch in Egypt. The party was known in Iraq as Left-wing Baath or Qutr Al-Iraq

11.
Major general
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Major general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the rank of sergeant major general. In the Commonwealth, major general is equivalent to the rank of rear admiral. In some countries, including much of Eastern Europe, major general is the lowest of the officer ranks. In the old Austro-Hungarian Army, the general was called a Generalmajor. Todays Austrian Federal Army still uses the same term, see also Rank insignias of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces General de Brigade is the lowest rank amongst general officers in the Brazilian Army. AGeneral de Brigada wears two-stars as this is the level for general officers in the Brazilian Army. In tha Brazilian Air Force, the two-star, three-star and four-star rank are known as Brigadeiro, Major-Brigadeiro, see Military ranks of Brazil and Brigadier for more information. In the Canadian Armed Forces, the rank of major-general is both a Canadian Army and Royal Canadian Air Force rank equivalent to the Royal Canadian Navys rank of rear-admiral, a major-general is a general officer, the equivalent of a naval flag officer. The major-general rank is senior to the ranks of brigadier-general and commodore, prior to 1968, the Air Force used the rank of air vice-marshal, instead. In the Canadian Army, the insignia is a wide braid on the cuff. It is worn on the straps of the service dress tunic. On the visor of the cap are two rows of gold oak leaves. Major-generals are initially addressed as general and name, as are all general officers, major-generals are normally entitled to staff cars. In the Estonian military, the general rank is called kindralmajor. The Finnish military equivalent is kenraalimajuri in Finnish, and generalmajor in Swedish and Danish, the French equivalent to the rank of major general is général de division. In the French military, major général is not a rank but an appointment conferred on some generals, usually of général de corps darmée rank, the position of major général can be considered the equivalent of a deputy chief of staff. In the French Army, Major General is a position and the general is normally of the rank of corps general

12.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested

13.
General officer
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A general officer is an officer of high rank in the army, and in some nations air forces or marines. The term general is used in two ways, as the title for all grades of general officer and as a specific rank. It originates in the 16th century, as a shortening of captain general, the adjective general had been affixed to officer designations since the late medieval period to indicate relative superiority or an extended jurisdiction. Today, the title of General is known in countries as a four-star rank. However different countries use different systems of stars for senior ranks and it has a NATO code of OF-9 and is the highest rank currently in use in a number of armies. The various grades of general officer are at the top of the rank structure. Lower-ranking officers in military forces are typically known as field officers or field-grade officers. There are two systems of general ranks used worldwide. In addition there is a system, the Arab system of ranks. Variations of one form, the old European system, were used throughout Europe. It is used in the United Kingdom, from which it spread to the Commonwealth. The other is derived from the French Revolution, where ranks are named according to the unit they command. The system used either a general or a colonel general rank. The rank of marshal was used by some countries as the highest rank. Many countries actually used two brigade command ranks, which is why some countries now use two stars as their brigade general insignia, mexico and Argentina still use two brigade command ranks. As a lieutenant outranks a sergeant major, confusion arises because a lieutenant is outranked by a major. Originally the serjeant major was, exclusively, the commander of the infantry, junior only to the captain general, the distinction of serjeant major general only applied after serjeant majors were introduced as a rank of field officer. Serjeant was eventually dropped from both titles, creating the modern rank titles

14.
Hafez al-Assad
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In 1966, Assad participated in a second coup, which toppled the traditional leaders of the Baath Party, and brought a radical military faction headed by Salah Jadid to power. Assad was appointed minister by the new government. In 1970 Assad seized power by toppling Jadid, and appointed himself the leader of Syria in the period 1970–71. He sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War in turn for support against Israel, while he had forsaken pan-Arabism—or at least the pan-Arab concept of unifying the Arab world into one Arab nation—he did seek to make Syria the defender of Arab interest against Israel. When he took power, Assad instituted one-man rule and organized state services into sectarian lines, the formerly collegial powers of Baathist decision-making were curtailed, and were transferred to the Syrian presidency. The Syrian government ceased to be a one-party system in the sense of the word. To maintain this system, a cult of personality centered on Assad. Having become the source of initiative inside the Syrian government. His first choice as successor was his brother Rifaat, who was seen as corrupt. In 1983–84, when Hafezs health was in doubt, Rifaat attempted to seize power, when Hafezs health did improve, Rifaat was exiled from Syria. His next choice of successor was his eldest son, Bassel, however Bassels 1994 death in a car accident forced Assad to turn to his third choice—his younger son Bashar al-Assad, who at that time had no practical political experience. This move was met with criticism within some quarters of the Syrian ruling class. Assad died in 2000 and was succeeded by Bashar al-Assad as President, Hafez was born on 6 October 1930 in Qardaha to an Alawite family of the Kalbiyya tribe. His parents were Nasa and Ali Sulayman al-Assad, Hafez was Alis ninth son, and the fourth from his second marriage. Sulayman married twice, had children and was known for his strength and shooting abilities. By the 1920s he was respected locally, and like others he initially opposed the French Mandate for Syria. Nevertheless, Ali Sulayman later cooperated with the French administration and was appointed to an official post. In 1936, he was one of 80 Alawite notables who signed a letter addressed to the French Prime Minister saying that Alawi people rejected attachment to Syria, for his accomplishments, he was called al-Assad by local residents and made the nickname his surname in 1927

15.
Jableh
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Jableh Ǧabla), also spelt Jebleh, Jabala, Jablah or Gabala, is a coastal city on the Mediterranean in Syria,25 km north of Baniyas and 25 km south of Latakia, with c.80,000 inhabitants. As Ancient Gabala it was a Byzantine bishopric and remains a Latin Catholic titular see and it contains the tomb and mosque of Ibrahim Bin Adham, a legendary Sufi mystic who renounced his throne of Balkh and devoted himself to prayers for the rest of his life. Jableh has been inhabited since at least the second millennium BCE, the city was part of the Ugaritic kingdom and was mentioned as Gbʿly in the archives of the city c.1200 BC. In antiquity Jableh was an important Hellenistic and then Roman city, one of the main remains of this period is a theatre, capable of housing c.7,000 spectators. Near the seashores even older remains were found dating to the Iron Age or Phoenician Era, in the medieval period, Jableh was part of the Principality of Antioch, one of the Crusader States, until it was captured by Saladin in 1189 during the Third Crusade. One famous resident was Hugh of Jabala, the bishop, who reported the fall of Edessa to Pope Eugene III. Less than 1 kilometer from the city lies the ancient site of Gibala. This city was inhabited from the third millennium BCE until the Persian period, on May 23,2016, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for four suicide bombings in Jableh, which had remained largely unaffected since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011. Purportedly targeting Alawite gatherings, the bombs killed over a hundred people, in Tartus, similarly insulated, another three bombers killed 48 people. No later then the 4th century, Gabala became a bishopric in the Roman province of Syria Prima, later it was raised to a Byzantine autocephalous Archbishopric, remaining within the sway of the original Patriarchate of Antioch, apparently until the Muslims conquered all Syria. Latin Bishops of Gabala William/ Guglielmo Ugo V. Radulfo Gualterio di Calabria, no later then the 16th century the diocese was nominally restored as Latin Titular bishopric. E. P. Jacobus Glazer Alain Guynot de Boismenu, Sacred Heart Missionaries In.1932 it became as Latin Titular archbishopric of Gabala / Gabalen. The majority of people in Jableh depend on agriculture for their life, people grow orange and lemon trees, olives, in the center of the city people work in trade and there are small factories in the city for cottons and for making orange juice. Syrian pioneer of modern Arabic poetry Adunis, who was one of the first Arabic poets, Jableh Sporting Club is a football club based in Jableh. The club plays its games in the Al-Baath Stadium, which has a capacity of 10,000. 797-800 Konrad Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, vol. 6, pp. 221–222 Charles Du Fresne Du Cange, Les Familles doutre-mer, Paris,1869, pp. 795–796 Siméon Vailhé, Notes de géographie ecclésiastique, in Échos dOrient, Vol. IV, pp. 15–17

16.
Alawites
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The Alawites, also known as Alawis, are part of a branch of Islam, Alawi Islam, centered in Syria, who follow the Twelver school of Shia Islam but with syncretistic elements. Alawites revere Ali, and the name Alawi means followers of Ali, the sect is believed to have been founded by Ibn Nusayr during the 9th century. Today, Alawites represent 11 percent of the Syrian population and are a significant minority in Turkey, there is also a population living in the village of Ghajar in the Golan Heights. They are often confused with the Alevis of Turkey, Alawites form the dominant religious group on the Syrian coast and towns near the coast which are also inhabited by Sunnis, Christians, and Ismailis. Alawites have historically kept their beliefs secret from outsiders and non-initiated Alawites, Arabic accounts of their beliefs tend to be partisan. However, since the early 2000s, Western scholarship on the Alawite religion has made significant advances, at the core of Alawite belief is a divine triad, comprising three aspects of the one God. These aspects or emanations appear cyclically in human form throughout history, the last emanations of the divine triad, according to Alawite belief, were as Ali, Muhammad and Salman the Persian. Alawites were historically persecuted for these beliefs by the Sunni Muslim rulers of the area, the establishment of the French Mandate of Syria marked a turning point in Alawi history. It gave the French the power to recruit Syrian civilians into their forces for an indefinite period and created exclusive areas for minorities. The Alawite State was later dismantled, but the Alawites continued to be a significant part of the Syrian army, since Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970, the government has been dominated by a political elite led by the Alawite Al-Assad family. During the Islamic uprising in Syria in the 1970s and 1980s the establishment came under pressure, even greater pressure has resulted from the Syrian Civil War. French occupying forces used the term Alaouites, a transliteration into French, in older sources, Alawis are often called Ansaris. According to Samuel Lyde, who lived among the Alawites during the mid-19th century, other sources indicate that Ansari is simply a Western error in the transliteration of Nosairi. However, the term Nusayri had fallen out of currency by the 1920s and they characterised the older name as an invention of the sects enemies, ostensibly favouring an emphasis on connection with mainstream Islam—particularly the Shia branch. As such, Nusayri is now regarded as antiquated, and has even come to have insulting. Recent research has shown that the Alawi appellation was used by the sects adherents since the 11th century, the following quote from Alkan illustrates this point, In actual fact, the name Alawī appears as early as in an 11 th-century Nuṣayrī tract. Moreover, the term Alawī was already used at the beginning of the 20th century, lastly, it is interesting to note that in the above-mentioned petitions of 1892 and 1909 the Nuṣayrīs called themselves the Arab Alawī people our ʿAlawī Nuṣayrī people or signed with Alawī people. This early self-designation is, in my opinion, of triple importance, the Alawites are distinct from the Alevi religious sect in Turkey, although the terms share a common etymology and pronunciation

17.
Syrian Social Nationalist Party
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The Syrian Social Nationalist Party, is a nationalist political party operating in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine. Until recent times it was a key group in the March 8 Alliance, in Syria, the SSNP had become a major Right-wing political force in the early 1950s, but was thoroughly repressed in 1955-56. It remained organized, and by the late 1960s had joined the Left and allied itself with the PLO, in 2005, it was legalized in Syria and joined the Baath Party-led National Progressive Front. From 2012 to 6 May 2014, the party was part of the Popular Front for Change, in the mid Nineteenth Century Butrus al-Bustani was one of the first to assert the existence of a Natural Syrian nation that should be accommodated in a reformed Ottoman Empire. In that aspect, the works of Khalil Gibran who began expressing his belief in Syrian nationalism and patriotism are central, as Gibran said, I believe in you, and I believe in your destiny. I believe that you are contributors to this new civilization, I believe that it is in you to be good citizens. And what is it to be a good citizen, the late 1920s and the early 1930s were also a period of cultural and political effervescence that greatly contributed to the emergence of Syrian nationalism as a distinct ideology. In 1920, the French army toppled the first Arab Kingdom of Syria and the Hashemite King Faisal, the British and the French dissected the region into spheres of influence in what later became known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, setting up colonial administrations throughout the Levant. Class tensions sharpened as some Palestinian landowners sold their lands to the Jewish National Fund, with regard to the national aspirations. It also represented a departure from the Arab nationalist current that advocated the unification of the entirety of the Arab World. During his time in prison Saadeh wrote The Genesis of Nations to lay out the SSNPs ideology, at that time, the Party joined ranks with other nationalist and patriotic forces including the National Bloc, whereas it began militating, in secret, for the overthrow of the Mandate. Many SSNP members also felt that the NB refused to cooperate with them due to the fact that their founder was Christian, Saadeh emigrated again to Brazil in 1938 and afterwards to Argentina, only to return to Lebanon in 1947 following the countrys independence from the French in 1943. On his way to Argentina, he visited Italy and Berlin, coming back shortly to Lebanon in 1939, he was questioned by the French authorities who accused him of plotting with the Germans. Being vehemently anti-communist in its days, a position that would later change, it had also clashed with the Syrian-Lebanese Communist Party. The SSNP also called for the reclamation of Alexandretta which had been given to Turkey by France. As communists defected away after the Communist Partys sudden pivot upon orders from the Soviet Union, following a violent crackdown by government forces, Saadeh traveled to Damascus to meet with Husni al-Zaim in an attempt to obtain his support. A decision was taken by king Farouk, Riad el Solh and Husni al-Zaim to eliminate Antoun Saadeh, under the patronage of British Intelligence, as a result, Al-Zaim handed Saadeh over to Lebanese authorities, who had him executed on July 8,1949. It was the shortest and most secretive trial given to a political offender and this occurred right after the Party was accused of having plotted the assassination of Adnan al-Malki, a Left-leaning Baath Party army officer in Syria, and after Party members had fled to Beirut

18.
Michel Aflaq
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Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, sociologist and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Baathism and its political movement and he published various books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Battle for One Destiny and The Struggle Against Distorting the Movement of Arab Revolution. Born into a family in Damascus, Syria, Aflaq studied at the Sorbonne. He returned to Syria in 1932, and began his career in communist politics. Aflaq became a communist activist, but broke his ties with the communist movement when the Syrian–Lebanese Communist Party supported Frances colonial policies, later in 1940 Aflaq and al-Bitar established the Arab Ihya Movement. The movement proved successful, and in 1947 the Arab Baath Movement merged with al-Arsuzis Arab Baath organisation to establish the Arab Baath Party, Aflaq was elected to the partys executive committee and was elected Amid. The Arab Baath Party merged with Akram al-Hawranis Arab Socialist Party to establish the Arab Socialist Baath Party in 1952, during the mid-to-late 1950s the party began developing relations with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, which eventually led to the establishment of the United Arab Republic. Nasser forced Aflaq to dissolve the party, which he did, shortly after the UARs dissolution, Aflaq was reelected as Secretary General of the National Command of the Baath Party. Following the 8th of March Revolution, Aflaqs position within the party was weakened to such an extent that he was forced to resign as the leader in 1965. Aflaq was ousted during the 1966 Syrian coup détat, which led to a schism within the Baath Party and he escaped to Lebanon, but later went to Iraq. In 1968 Aflaq was elected Secretary General of the Iraqi-led Baath Party and he held the post until his death on 23 June 1989. He was critical of capitalism and communism, and critical of Karl Marxs view of dialectical materialism as the only truth. Baathist thought placed much emphasis on liberty and Arab socialism – a socialism with Arab characteristics, Aflaq believed in the separation of state and religion, and was a strong believer in secularisation, but was against atheism. Although a Christian, he believed Islam to be proof of Arab genius, in the aftermath of the 1966 Baath Party split, the Syrian-led Baath Party accused Aflaq of stealing al-Arsuzis ideas, and called him a thief. The Iraqi-led Baath Party rejects this, and does not believe that al-Arsuzi contributed to Baathist thought, born on 9 January 1910 in Damascus to a middle class Greek Orthodox Christian family, his father, Joseph, working as a grain merchant. Aflaq was first educated in the schools of the French Mandate of Syria. In 1929, he left Syria to study abroad at the Sorbonne in Paris. During his stay Aflaq was influenced by the works of Henri Bergson, and met his longtime collaborator Salah al-Din al-Bitar, Aflaq founded an Arab Student Union at the Sorbonne, and discovered the writings of Karl Marx

19.
Salah al-Din al-Bitar
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Salah ad-Din al-Bitar was a Syrian politician who co-founded the Arab Baath Party with Michel Aflaq in the early 1940s. As students in Paris in the early 1930s, the two formulated a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism, Bitar later served as prime minister in several early Baathist governments in Syria but became alienated from the party as it grew more radical. In 1966 he fled the country, lived mostly in Europe, according to historian Hanna Batatu, Bitar was born in the Midan area of Damascus in 1912, he was the son of a reasonably well-off Sunni Muslim grain merchant. His family were religious and many of his recent ancestors had been ulama, Bitar grew up in a conservative family atmosphere and attended a Muslim elementary school before receiving his secondary education in Maktab Anbar. He was exposed to the vicissitudes of the time, as Midan played a leading role in the Great Syrian Revolution of 1925 against France—then the mandatory power in Syria. The district was heavily bombarded with considerable loss of life and physical damage, Bitar traveled to France in 1929 to study in the Sorbonne. There he became acquainted with Michel Aflaq, also the son of a Midan grain merchant who was from a Christian Orthodox family and they were both interested in the political and intellectual movements of the time, and began applying nationalist and Marxist ideas to the situation of their homeland. Bitar returned to Syria in 1934, and took a job teaching physics and mathematics at the Tajhiz al-Ula, during the next two years, Bitar, Aflaq and other associates edited a review entitled al-Talia. According to Batatu, this publication displayed more concern with social issues than with national problems, Bitar and Aflaqs political stance was closer to the Syrian Communist Party than to any of the other political groups in Damascus. They became disillusioned with the Communists in 1936, after the Popular Front government came to power in France, although the French Communist Party was now part of the government, Frances approach to its colonies barely changed. Bitar and Aflaq were unhappy with the Syrian partys stance in these circumstances, in 1939, Aflaq and Bitar began to attract a small following of students, and in 1941 they issued leaflets agitating against French rule, using the title al-ihyaa al-arabi—the Arab Resurrection. On 24 October 1942 both Bitar and Aflaq resigned from their positions to take up politics full-time. They slowly gained supporters and in 1945 the first elected Bureau of the Arab Baath Movement was formed, the following year, the organisation gained many new members when most of the former supporters of Arsuzi, led by Wahib al-Ghanim, joined it. In 1947, during the first party congress held in Damascus, in 1952 Syrias military dictator Adib al-Shishakli banned all political parties. The rules and constitution of Bitar and Aflaqs party were adopted unchanged, all three were elected to the partys new National Command, along with a supporter of Hawrani. Following the overthrow of Shishakli, Syria held its first democratic elections in five years, Bitar was elected as a deputy for Damascus, defeating the secretary general of the Syrian Social National Party—one of the Baaths bitterest ideological enemies. He became Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1956 and held the post until 1958, along with other Baathists, he agitated in favour of the unification of Syria with Nassers Egypt. At the beginning, Bitar was the only Syrian in the central cabinet and he and other Syrians in the UAR leadership became dismayed over the dominant role Nasser gave the Egyptians in administrating the UAR

20.
Akram al-Hawrani
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Akram Al-Hourani, was a Syrian politician who played a prominent role in the formation of a widespread populist, nationalist movement in Syria and in the rise of the Baath Party. He was highly influential in Syrian politics from the beginning of the 1940s until his departure into exile in 1963, Al-Hourani held various positions including a government ministry and the joint vice-presidency of the United Arab Republic. He was educated in Hama and Damascus before joining the faculty at the Jesuit University in 1932. He was forced to leave the institution soon thereafter, having been implicated in the assassination of former Syrian president. In 1936, he enrolled in the Damascus Law School, in 1938 he left the party and returned to Hama to practice law. There he took over the Hizb al-Shabab founded by a cousin, the province of Hama in the earlier part of the twentieth century was characterised by feudalism, with landlords owning most of the land. The landlords exercised complete control over the peasantry, backed up by what amounted to private armies and he retained his seat in the elections of 1947,1949,1954, and 1962. Between 1949 and 1954 Syrian politics was punctuated by four military coups, based on his strong influence in the army, Al-Hourani was considered to have played a part in these coups, however there is no concrete evidence to support that. He was initially close to the leader of the third and fourth coups, Adib al-Shishakli. Al-Shishaklis decision to sign a decree distributing state lands to the peasantry in January 1952 appears to have been under al-Hawranis influence. However, as the dictator grew more autocratic his influence waned, there, in November that year, he agreed to merge the Arab Socialist Party with the Arab Baath Party led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. The latter thus gained a base of active supporters for the first time. The unified party adopted the name Arab Baath Socialist Party and it was disbanded, along with all Syrian political parties by president Nasser in 1958. The relation between Al-Hourani and Aflaq ended acrimoniously in 1962, Al-Hourani was a member of the Baath Party national command, meaning its pan-Arab leadership, from its establishment in 1954 until 1959. This has been described as the point where the Baath Party turned their backs, after the treaty of union between Syria and Egypt in 1958 Al-Hourani became Vice-President of the United Arab Republic under Gamal Abdel Nasser, a post he held until 1959. He subsequently differed with Aflaq and al-Bitar over the position regarding the UAR. When a 1961 military coup in Syria led to the dissolution of the UAR, Al-Hourani publicly supported it, the Baath Party split into several competing factions, but as the national command decided in favour of reunification, Al-Hourani left it. He was officially expelled in June 1962, whereafter he and his loyalists re-established the Arab Socialist Party, however, popular support for unity hampered its growth and it was strong only in his original stronghold of Hama

21.
Gamal Abdel Nasser
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Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt, serving from 1956 until his death. Nasser led the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy and introduced far-reaching land reforms the following year, Nassers popularity in Egypt and the Arab world skyrocketed after his nationalization of the Suez Canal and his political victory in the subsequent Suez Crisis. Calls for pan-Arab unity under his leadership increased, culminating with the formation of the United Arab Republic with Syria, in 1962, Nasser began a series of major socialist measures and modernization reforms in Egypt. Despite setbacks to his pan-Arabist cause, by 1963 Nassers supporters gained power in several Arab countries and he began his second presidential term in March 1965 after his political opponents were banned from running. Following Egypts defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, Nasser resigned, after the conclusion of the 1970 Arab League summit, Nasser suffered a heart attack and died. His funeral in Cairo drew five million mourners and an outpouring of grief across the Arab world, Nasser remains an iconic figure in the Arab world, particularly for his strides towards social justice and Arab unity, modernization policies, and anti-imperialist efforts. His presidency also encouraged and coincided with an Egyptian cultural boom, Gamal Abdel Nasser was born on 15 January 1918 in Bakos, Alexandria, the first son of Fahima and Abdel Nasser Hussein. Nassers father was a postal worker born in Beni Mur in Upper Egypt and raised in Alexandria and his parents married in 1917, and later had two more boys, Izz al-Arab and al-Leithi. Nassers family traveled frequently due to his fathers work, in 1921, they moved to Asyut and, in 1923, to Khatatba, where Nassers father ran a post office. Nasser attended a school for the children of railway employees until 1924, when he was sent to live with his paternal uncle in Cairo. Nasser exchanged letters with his mother and visited her on holidays and he stopped receiving messages at the end of April 1926. Upon returning to Khatatba, he learned that his mother had died giving birth to his third brother, Shawki. Nasser later stated that losing her this way was a shock so deep that time failed to remedy and he adored his mother and the injury of her death deepened when his father remarried before the years end. In 1928, Nasser went to Alexandria to live with his maternal grandfather and it was in Alexandria that Nasser became involved in political activism. After witnessing clashes between protesters and police in Manshia Square, he joined the demonstration without being aware of its purpose. The protest, organized by the ultranationalist Young Egypt Society, called for the end of colonialism in Egypt in the wake of the 1923 Egyptian constitutions annulment by Prime Minister Ismail Sidqi, Nasser was arrested and detained for a night before his father bailed him out. When his father was transferred to Cairo in 1933, Nasser joined him and he took up acting in school plays for a brief period and wrote articles for the schools paper, including a piece on French philosopher Voltaire titled Voltaire, the Man of Freedom. Two protesters were killed and Nasser received a graze to the head from a policemans bullet, the incident garnered his first mention in the press, the nationalist newspaper Al Gihad reported that Nasser led the protest and was among the wounded

22.
Nasserism
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Spanning the domestic and international spheres, it combines elements of Arab socialism, republicanism, nationalism, anti-imperialism, Developing world solidarity, and international non-alignment. In the 1950s and 1960s, Nasserism was amongst the most potent political ideologies in the Arab world and this was especially true following the Suez Crisis of 1956, the political outcome of which was seen as a validation of Nasserism, and a tremendous defeat for Western imperial powers. During the Cold War, its influence was felt in other parts of Africa, and the developing world, particularly with regard to anti-imperialism. The scale of the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967 damaged the standing of Nasser, both groups have been mainly active since the early 1950s among Sunni Muslims, and they are currently associated politically with the March 8 coalitions in Lebanese politics. Nasserism continues to have significant resonance throughout the Arab world to this day, and informs much of the dialogue on politics in Egypt. “Nasserism, ” the broad term used in literature to describe the aspects of Nasser’s rule, however, in Rethinking Nasserism, Podeh and Winckler, discuss another interpretation of Nasserism. Thus, Nasserism was perceived as an attempt to transform Egyptian traditional society through the modernization of its economy and society. ”Khalidi asserts that this change inspired self-confidence in the Arab community, which was particularly welcome after the recent shock over the loss of Palestine. Nasserism is an Arab nationalist and pan-Arabist ideology, combined with a vaguely defined socialism, though mindful of the Islamic and Christian heritage of the Arab world, as with Baathism, Nasserism is largely a secular ideology. Nasserists espouse an end to Western interference in Arab affairs, developing world solidarity, international non-alignment, modernisation, Nasser himself was opposed vehemently to Western imperialism, sharing the commonly held Arab view that Zionism was an extension of European colonialism on Arab soil. The Egyptian-Soviet alliance continued well into the presidency of Nassers successor as president, Anwar Sadat, Nasserism remains a political force throughout the Arab world, but in a markedly different manner than in its heyday. Today, many more Arabs are informed by Nasserism in a general sense than actually espouse its specific ideals, Nasserist movements were largely overshadowed by Islamic political organisations, especially the Muslim Brotherhood. This was a part of a trend within Egypt and the Arab world of Arab nationalism being overshadowed. In Egypt, the Nasserist Party styles itself as the successor to Nasser and his Arab Socialist Union, as does its offshoot, however, as with all opposition parties in Egypt, their activities was severely limited by the Mubarak regime prior to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Despite being a quintessentially Arab ideology, Nasserism influenced, to a degree, left-wing movements in parts of the Developing World, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. Under Nasser, the Egyptian government gave support, both moral and material, to Sub-Saharan liberation movements fighting European imperialism. Similar sentiments have been expressed by Fidel Castro, the former Cuban President, with regard to the Cuban Revolution, both men stated that Egypts resistance under Nasser against the joint British, French, and Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 proved to be inspirational for their own movements. I told him that I was optimistic, because the ideas of Nasser are still alive, Nasser was one of the greatest people of Arab history. To say the least, I am a Nasserist, ever since I was a young soldier, gamal Abdel Nasser Arab nationalism Pan-Arabism Arab socialism Egyptian Revolution of 1952 Baathism

23.
United Arab Republic
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The United Arab Republic, alternatively referred to, mostly in Israel in the 1960s-70s, as the United Arab Commonwealth was a short-lived political union between Egypt and Syria. The union began in 1958 and existed until 1961, when Syria seceded from the union after the 1961 Syrian coup détat, Egypt continued to be known officially as the United Arab Republic until 1971. The president was Gamal Abdel Nasser and it was a member of the United Arab States, a loose confederation with North Yemen which in 1961 dissolved along with the Republic. Pan-Arab sentiment traditionally was very strong in Syria, and Nasser was a popular hero-figure throughout the Arab world following the Suez War of 1956, there was thus considerable popular support in Syria for union with Nassers Egypt. The Arab Socialist Baath Party was the advocate of such a union. This caused the Syrian Crisis of 1957 after which Syrians intensified their efforts to unite with Egypt, according to Abdel Latif Boghdadi, Nasser initially resisted a total union with Syria, favoring instead a federal union. However, Nasser was more afraid of a Communist takeover and agreed on a total merger, Syria had had a democratic government since the overthrow of Adib al-Shishaklis military regime in 1954, and popular pressure for Arab unity was reflected in the composition of parliament. When on 11 January 1958 al-Bizri led a Syrian delegation composed of officers to Cairo. Nassers final terms for the union were decisive and non-negotiable, a plebiscite, the dissolution of parties, while the plebiscite seemed reasonable to most Syrian elites, the latter two conditions were extremely worrisome. They believed it would destroy life in Syria. Despite these concerns, the Syrian officials knew it was too late to turn back. The members of the elite in Syria viewed the merger with Egypt as the lesser of two evils. They believed that Nassers terms were unfair, but given the pressure that their government was undergoing. Egyptian and Syrian leaders signed the protocols, although Azem did so reluctantly, Nasser became the republics president and very soon carried out a crackdown against the Syrian Communists and opponents of the union which included dismissing Bizri and Azem from their posts. Advocates of the believed that Nasser would use the Baath Party for ruling Syria. Unfortunately for the Baathists, it was never Nassers intention to share a measure of power. Nasser gave each of the provinces two vice-presidents, assigning Boghdadi and Abdel Hakim Amer to Egypt and Sabri al-Assali and Akram El-Hourani—a leader of the Baath—to Syria, the new constitution of 1958 was adopted. Though Nasser allowed former Baath Party members to hold prominent political positions, during the winter and the spring of 1959–60, Nasser slowly squeezed prominent Syrians out of positions of influence. In the Syrian Ministry of Industry, for example, seven of the top thirteen positions were filled by Egyptians, in the General Petroleum Authority, four of the top six officials were Egyptian

24.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם‎, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian

25.
Cairo
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Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt. Cairo has long been a center of the political and cultural life. Cairo has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Arab world, as well as the worlds second-oldest institution of higher learning, Al-Azhar University. Many international media, businesses, and organizations have regional headquarters in the city, with a population of 6.76 million spread over 453 square kilometers, Cairo is by far the largest city in Egypt. An additional 9.5 million inhabitants live in proximity to the city. Cairo, like many other mega-cities, suffers from high levels of pollution, Cairos metro, one of only two in Africa, ranks among the fifteen busiest in the world, with over 1 billion annual passenger rides. The economy of Cairo was ranked first in the Middle East in 2005, Egyptians often refer to Cairo as Maṣr, the Egyptian Arabic name for Egypt itself, emphasizing the citys importance for the country. In Coptic the city is known as Kahire, meaning Place of the Sun, possibly referring to the ancient city of Heliopolis, the location of the ancient city is the suburb of Ain Shams. The ancient Egyptian name for the area is thought to be Khere-Ohe, The Place of Combat, sometimes the city is informally referred to as Kayro. The area around present-day Cairo, especially Memphis, had long been a point of Ancient Egypt due to its strategic location just upstream from the Nile Delta. However, the origins of the city are generally traced back to a series of settlements in the first millennium. Around the turn of the 4th century, as Memphis was continuing to decline in importance and this fortress, known as Babylon, remained the nucleus of the Roman, and, later, the Byzantine, city and is the oldest structure in the city today. It is also situated at the nucleus of the Coptic Orthodox community, many of Cairos oldest Coptic churches, including the Hanging Church, are located along the fortress walls in a section of the city known as Coptic Cairo. Following the Muslim conquest in 640 AD the conqueror Amr ibn As settled to the north of the Babylon in an area became known as al-Fustat. Originally a tented camp Fustat became a permanent settlement and the first capital of Islamic Egypt, in 750, following the overthrow of the Ummayad caliphate by the Abbasids, the new rulers created their own settlement to the northeast of Fustat which became their capital. This was known as al-Askar as it was laid out like a military camp, a rebellion in 869 by Ahmad ibn Tulun led to the abandonment of Al Askar and the building of another settlement, which became the seat of government. This was al-Qattai, to the north of Fustat and closer to the river, Al Qattai was centred around a palace and ceremonial mosque, now known as the Mosque of ibn Tulun. In 905 the Abbasids re-asserted control of the country and their returned to Fustat

26.
Abd al-Karim al-Jundi
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Abd al-Karim al-Jundi was a Syrian officer and a founding member of the Baath Partys Military Committee which took over power in the country after the 1963 military coup. He also served as minister of agrarian reform, and commander of the security bureau. Al-Jundi was born to a landowning family in the rural town of Salamiyah in the Hamah Governorate. Though Salamiyah was a predominantly Ismaili town, al-Jundi belonged to the Sunni minority of the area and he received his military training at the Homs Military Academy. Al-Jundi, like members of his family, joined the Baath Party early in his youth. In 1960 al-Jundi, then a captain in the army of the United Arab Republic, following the Syrian secessionist coup of 1961 that ended the UAR, the Military Committee started planning its own coup against the secessionist government. On 8 March 1963, the Military Committee launched a coup against the government of Nazim al-Qudsi. Following the coup, al-Jundi became a member of the National Council for the Revolutionary Command, between 1963 and 1964, he served as commander of the Rocket Forces at al-Qutayfah. Between 4 October 1964 and 21 December 1965, al-Jundi served as minister of agrarian reform in the two cabinets of Amin al-Hafiz and Yusuf Zuwayin. Al-Jundis tenure saw rapid state appropriation of land from traditional landowners. But he was opposed to the redistribution of the lands on small scales, in 1966, Al-Jundi was again given the portfolio of agrarian reform in the Yusuf Zuwayin cabinet which lasted from 1 March to 15 October. Following the 1966 coup détat, Salah Jadid became the strongman of the country. He began his rule by re-organizing all the agencies under the central command of the Baath Partys National Security Bureau. Jadid appointed al-Jundi, his ally, to head the security bureau, in early 1969 the power-struggle between Defence Minister Hafez al-Assad and Jadid became increasingly bitter and violent. As a result, al-Jundis power and influence rapidly declined

27.
Muhammad Umran
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Umran was born in 1922 into an Alawi smallholder family which belonged to the Khayyatin tribe. He hailed from the village of al-Mukharram, a village situated in the mountains east of Homs, Umran served in the Syrian Army during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and became active in politics following the militarys forceful intervention in Syrian politics during the 1940s and 1950s. He played a role under the aegis of Akram al-Hawrani in the 1954 uprising against Adib Shishaklis rule. He was one of the five founding members of the Military Committee, Umran was the committees chairman until the 8th of March Revolution in 1963, and was the oldest committee member. During the UAR years, Umran and Jadid travelled the country and established contact with former party comrades, in the immediate aftermath of the UARs dissolution, Umran contacted the other members of the Military Committee, and asked about the possibility of launching a coup to reestablish the union. He had outlined the political climate in Syria, and compared the strength of the Baath Party against other political opponents – he reached the conclusion that a coup could be successful. Umran was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in the Salah al-Din al-Bitars cabinet, after taking power, Umran became a member of the National Council for the Revolutionary Command, the leading decision-making organ. The organ was controlled more-or-less by the Military Committee and the Baath Partys military wing, after complaints from the civilian wing, Umran gave the civilian wing a faint idea of what the military leadership was up to. Umran was ousted from his position during the 1966 Syrian coup détat by his former Military Committee comrades and was jailed in Mezzeh Prison. He was released following the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel, which ended in the occupation of Syrias Golan Heights. Following his release, he fled to Lebanon, Umran was assassinated in Tripoli, Lebanon on 14 March 1972

28.
Nazim al-Kudsi
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Nazim al-Kudsi, also spelled Koudsi, al-Qudsi or al-Cudsi, was a Syrian politician and head of state. Al-Kudsi was born in Aleppo on February 14,1906, after receiving his high school degree in the Aleppo American College al-Kudsi obtained his university degree in law from Damascus University. He received a degree from the American University of Beirut. After his education, Kudsi returned to Syria in 1935 and joined the National Bloc, the leading anti-French independence movement and it was a political organization aimed at the emancipation from French control through diplomatic means rather than armed resistance. In 1936, he ran for Parliament on a Bloc ticket and he clashed with the Bloc leadership that failed to prevent the annexation of Alexandretta to Turkey in 1939, and resigned from Bloc ranks. They lobbied against the election of Shukri al-Kuwatli, a National Bloc leader, as president, to appease the opposition, the new President appointed Kudsi as Syria’s first Ambassador to the United States. Kudsi founded the Syrian Embassy in Washington, D. C. from scratch, in 1947, he and Rushdi al-Kikhiya founded the People’s Party in Aleppo. It was inaugurated as a movement to the Kuwatli regime and created to counterbalance the political weight of the National Party. The People’s Party founders were mainly notables from Aleppo who aimed at creating union between Syria and Iraq, maintaining a government, and advocating stronger ties with the West. The Hashemite royal family in Baghdad supported the party and funded many of its activities, in 1947, Kudsi ran for Parliament on a party ticket and won. His election was repeated in 1949,1954, and 1962 and he voted against the re-election of Kuwatli as president, but a parliamentary majority pushed through the election. On March 29,1949, the Kuwatli administration was toppled by a military coup détat, as a result, Za’im had him arrested and the People’s Party was shut down. He was released afterwards and placed under house arrest in Aleppo. On August 14,1949, he supported a coup that toppled and killed Za’im, launched by General Sami al-Hinnawi, an old friend of the People’s Party and an ally of the Hashemite royals in Baghdad. Hinnawi created a committee to run political affairs in the absence of an official government. Kudsi also served on the Constitutional Assembly that drafted a new constitution for Syria and his ally Kikhiya became Minister of Interior while other posts were distributed accordingly to members of the People’s Party and independents who also opposed the old regime. Kudsi conducted talks with Crown Prince Abd al-Illah of Iraq for creating immediate union between Syria and Iraq and made journeys to Baghdad for the purpose. He then went to Cairo and proposed a program for all Arab states at the Arab League on January 1,1951

29.
Sunni Islam
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Sunni Islam is the largest group of Islam. Its name comes from the word Sunnah, referring to the behavior of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to Sunni tradition, Muhammad did not clearly designate a successor and this contrasts with the Shia view, which holds that Muhammad intended his son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib to succeed him. Political tensions between Sunnis and Shias continued with varying intensity throughout Islamic history and they have been exacerbated in recent times by ethnic conflicts, as of 2009, Sunni Muslims constituted between 87–90% of the worlds Muslim population. Sunni Islam is the worlds largest religious denomination, followed by Catholicism and its adherents are referred to in Arabic as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah or ahl as-sunnah for short. In English, its doctrines and practices are sometimes called Sunnism, while adherents are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis, Sunnites, Sunni Islam is sometimes referred to as orthodox Islam. The Quran, together with hadith and binding juristic consensus form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam, sunnī, also commonly referred to as Sunnīism, is a term derived from sunnah meaning habit, usual practice, custom, tradition. The Muslim use of this term refers to the sayings and living habits of the prophet Muhammad, in Arabic, this branch of Islam is referred to as ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamāʻah, the people of the sunnah and the community, which is commonly shortened to ahl as-sunnah. One common mistake is to assume that Sunni Islam represents a normative Islam that emerged during the period after Muhammads death, and that Sufism and Shiism developed out of Sunni Islam. This perception is due to the reliance on highly ideological sources that have been accepted as reliable historical works. Both Sunnism and Shiaism are the end products of centuries of competition between ideologies. Both sects used each other to further cement their own identities and doctrines, the first four caliphs are known among Sunnis as the Rashidun or Rightly-Guided Ones. Sunni recognition includes the aforementioned Abu Bakr as the first, Umar who established the Islamic calendar as the second, Uthman as the third, Sunnis believe that the companions of Muhammad were the best of Muslims. Support for this view is found in the Quran, according to Sunnis. Sunnis also believe that the companions were true believers since it was the companions who were given the task of compiling the Quran, furthermore, narrations that were narrated by the companions are considered by Sunnis to be a second source of knowledge of the Muslim faith. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2010 and released January 2011 found that there are 1.62 billion Muslims around the world, Islam does not have a formal hierarchy or clergy. Leaders are informal, and gain influence through study to become a scholar of Islamic law, according to the Islamic Center of Columbia, South Carolina, anyone with the intelligence and the will can become an Islamic scholar. During Midday Mosque services on Fridays, the congregation will choose a person to lead the service

30.
Eastern Bloc
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The Eastern Bloc was the group of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact. The terms Communist Bloc and Soviet Bloc were also used to denote groupings of states aligned with the Soviet Union, although these terms might include states outside Central and Eastern Europe. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a socialist island, Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence. Lithuania was added in a secret protocol in September 1939. During the Occupation of East Poland by the Soviet Union, the Soviets liquidated the Polish state, Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly Soviet-annexed areas. Soviet authorities collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property, the international community condemned this initial annexation of the Baltic states and deemed it illegal. In June 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union, from the time of this invasion to 1944, the areas annexed by the Soviet Union were part of Germanys Ostland. Thereafter, the Soviet Union began to push German forces westward through a series of battles on the Eastern Front, from 1943 to 1945, several conferences regarding Post-War Europe occurred that, in part, addressed the potential Soviet annexation and control of countries in Central Europe. I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he wont try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace. While meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in restoring Poland as an independent country, Britain did not press the matter for fear that it would become a source of inter-allied friction. In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of influence in Central Europe. Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany, after resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current pro-Soviet government on a broader democratic basis in Poland. He stated that the new primary task would be to prepare elections. In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for war booty, which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations. At first, the Soviets concealed their role in other Eastern Bloc politics, as a young communist was told in East Germany, its got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control. Moscow-trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation, elimination of the bourgeoisies social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority. These measures were publicly billed as reforms rather than socioeconomic transformations, the bloc system permitted the Soviet Union to exercise domestic control indirectly. Crucial departments such as responsible for personnel, general police, secret police

31.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam

32.
Zionism
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Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel. Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a revival movement, in reaction to anti-Semitic. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the state in Palestine. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism continues primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to threats to its continued existence. A variety of Zionism, called cultural Zionism, founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Haam, unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ahad Haam strived for Israel to be a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews. Advocates of Zionism view it as a liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people residing as minorities in a variety of nations to their ancestral homeland. The term Zionism is derived from the word Zion, referring to Jerusalem and these groups were collectively called the Lovers of Zion and were seen to encounter a growing Jewish movement toward assimilation. The first use of the term is attributed to the Austrian Nathan Birnbaum, founder of a nationalist Jewish students movement Kadimah, the common denominator among all Zionists is the claim to Eretz Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for Jewish national self-determination. It is based on ties and religious traditions linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. Zionism does not have an ideology, but has evolved in a dialogue among a plethora of ideologies, General Zionism, Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Green Zionism. The political movement was established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat. At that time, the movement sought to encourage Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine, although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to assimilation and antisemitism, Zionism expanded rapidly. In its early stages, supporters considered setting up a Jewish state in the territory of Palestine. After World War II and the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted, the alliance with Britain was strained as the latter realized the implications of the Jewish movement for Arabs in Palestine but the Zionists persisted. The movement was successful in establishing Israel on May 14,1948. The proportion of the worlds Jews living in Israel has steadily grown since the movement emerged, by the early 21st century, more than 40% of the worlds Jews live in Israel, more than in any other country. These two outcomes represent the success of Zionism, and are unmatched by any other Jewish political movement in the past 2,000 years. In some academic studies, Zionism has been analyzed both within the context of diaspora politics and as an example of modern national liberation movements

33.
Socialism
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Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective, or cooperative ownership, to citizen ownership of equity, or to any combination of these. Although there are varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them. Socialist economic systems can be divided into both non-market and market forms, non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend, the feasibility and exact methods of resource allocation and calculation for a socialist system are the subjects of the socialist calculation debate. Core dichotomies associated with these concerns include reformism versus revolutionary socialism, the term is frequently used to draw contrast to the political system of the Soviet Union, which critics argue operated in an authoritarian fashion. By the 1920s, social democracy and communism became the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, by this time, Socialism emerged as the most influential secular movement of the twentieth century, worldwide. Socialist parties and ideas remain a force with varying degrees of power and influence in all continents. Today, some socialists have also adopted the causes of social movements. The origin of the term socialism may be traced back and attributed to a number of originators, in addition to significant historical shifts in the usage, for Andrew Vincent, The word ‘socialism’ finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was societas and this latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen. The term socialism was created by Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled utopian socialism. Simon coined socialism as a contrast to the doctrine of individualism. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the ownership of resources. The term socialism is attributed to Pierre Leroux, and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France, the term communism also fell out of use during this period, despite earlier distinctions between socialism and communism from the 1840s. An early distinction between socialism and communism was that the former aimed to only socialise production while the latter aimed to socialise both production and consumption. However, by 1888 Marxists employed the term socialism in place of communism, linguistically, the contemporary connotation of the words socialism and communism accorded with the adherents and opponents cultural attitude towards religion. In Christian Europe, of the two, communism was believed to be the atheist way of life, in Protestant England, the word communism was too culturally and aurally close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists. Friedrich Engels argued that in 1848, at the time when the Communist Manifesto was published, socialism was respectable on the continent and this latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany

34.
Six-Day War
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The Six-Day War, also known as the June War,1967 Arab–Israeli War, or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10,1967 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Relations between Israel and its neighbours had never fully normalised following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, in the period leading up to June 1967, tensions became dangerously heightened. In reaction to the mobilisation of Egyptian forces along the Israeli border in the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptians were caught by surprise, and nearly the entire Egyptian air force was destroyed with few Israeli losses, giving the Israelis air superiority. Simultaneously, the Israelis launched an offensive into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai. After some initial resistance, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the evacuation of the Sinai, Israeli forces rushed westward in pursuit of the Egyptians, inflicted heavy losses, and conquered the Sinai. Nasser induced Syria and Jordan to begin attacks on Israel by using the initially confused situation to claim that Egypt had defeated the Israeli air strike. Israeli counterattacks resulted in the seizure of East Jerusalem as well as the West Bank from the Jordanians, on June 11, a ceasefire was signed. Arab casualties were far heavier than those of Israel, fewer than a thousand Israelis had been killed compared to over 20,000 from the Arab forces. Israels military success was attributed to the element of surprise, an innovative and well-executed battle plan, Israel seized control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israeli morale and international prestige was greatly increased by the outcome of the war, across the Arab world, Jewish minority communities were expelled, with refugees going to Israel or Europe. After the 1956 Suez Crisis, Egypt agreed to the stationing of a United Nations Emergency Force in the Sinai to ensure all parties would comply with the 1949 Armistice Agreements, in the following years there were numerous minor border clashes between Israel and its Arab neighbors, particularly Syria. In early November 1966, Syria signed a defense agreement with Egypt. Jordanian units that engaged the Israelis were quickly beaten back, King Hussein of Jordan criticized Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for failing to come to Jordans aid, and hiding behind UNEF skirts. In May 1967, Nasser received false reports from the Soviet Union that Israel was massing on the Syrian border, the right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations. On May 30, Jordan and Egypt signed a defense pact, the following day, at Jordans invitation, the Iraqi army began deploying troops and armoured units in Jordan. They were later reinforced by an Egyptian contingent, on June 1, Israel formed a National Unity Government by widening its cabinet, and on June 4 the decision was made to go to war. The next morning, Israel launched Operation Focus, a surprise air strike that was the opening of the Six-Day War. Before the war, Israeli pilots and ground crews had trained extensively in rapid refitting of aircraft returning from sorties and this has contributed to the Arab belief that the IAF was helped by foreign air forces

35.
Golan Heights
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The Golan Heights, or simply the Golan or the Syrian Golan, is a region in the Levant. As a geopolitical region, the Golan Heights is the area captured from Syria and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War and this region includes the western two-thirds of the geological Golan Heights, as well as the Israeli-occupied part of Mount Hermon. The earliest evidence of habitation dates to the Upper Paleolithic period. According to the Bible, an Amorite Kingdom in Bashan was conquered by Israelites during the reign of King Og, throughout the Old Testament period, the Golan was the focus of a power struggle between the Kings of Israel and the Aramaeans who were based near modern-day Damascus. The Itureans, an Arab or Aramaic people, settled there in the 2nd century BCE, organized Jewish settlement in the region came to an end in 636 CE when it was conquered by Arabs under Umar ibn al-Khattāb. In the 16th century, the Golan was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and was part of the Vilayet of Damascus until it was transferred to French control in 1918, when the mandate terminated in 1946, it became part of the newly independent Syrian Arab Republic. Internationally recognized as Syrian territory, the Golan Heights has been occupied and administered by Israel since 1967 and it was captured during the 1967 Six-Day War, establishing the Purple Line. On 19 June 1967, the Israeli cabinet voted to return the Golan to Syria in exchange for a peace agreement, although this was rejected after the Khartoum Resolution of 1 September 1967. In the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Syria tried but failed to recapture the Golan and this part was incorporated into a demilitarised zone that runs along the ceasefire line and extends eastward. This strip is under the control of UNDOF. Israel states it has a right to retain the Golan, citing the text of UN Resolution 242, however, the international community reject Israeli claims to title to the territory and regards it as sovereign Syrian territory. Historically, Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, later, in 2010, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman told Syria to abandon its dreams of recovering the Golan Heights. Approximately 10% of Syrian Golan Druze have accepted Israeli citizenship, according to the CIA World Factbook, as of 2010, there are 41 Israeli settlements and civilian land use sites in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Arabic names are Jawlān and Djolan, in the Bible, Golan is mentioned as a city of refuge located in Bashan, Deuteronomy 4,43, Joshua 20,8,1 Chronicles 6,71. Nineteenth-century authors interpreted the word Golan as meaning something surrounded, hence a district, the Greek name for the region is Gaulanitis. In the Mishna the name is Gablān similar to Aramaic language names for the region, Gawlāna, Guwlana, Arab cartographers of the Byzantine period referred to the area as jabal, though the region is a plateau. The Muslims took over in 7th century CE, the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia refers to the region as Gaulonitis. The name Golan Heights was not used before the 19th century, the Golan Heights borders Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan

36.
Jordan
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Jordan, officially The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is an Arab kingdom in Western Asia, on the East Bank of the Jordan River. Jordan is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the east and south, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north, Israel, Palestine and the Dead Sea to the west, Jordan is strategically located at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe. The capital, Amman, is Jordans most populous city as well as the countrys economic, what is now Jordan has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic period. Three stable kingdoms emerged there at the end of the Bronze Age, Ammon, Moab, later rulers include the Nabataean Kingdom, the Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. After the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in 1916 during World War I, the Emirate of Transjordan was established in 1921 by the then Emir Abdullah I and became a British protectorate. In 1946, Jordan became an independent state known as The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Jordan captured the West Bank, which it later lost in 1967, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Jordan is a founding member of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and is one of two Arab states to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. The country is a monarchy, but the king holds wide executive and legislative powers. Jordan is a relatively-small, semi-arid, almost-landlocked country with a population numbering at 9.5 million, Sunni Islam, practiced by around 92% of the population, is the dominant religion in Jordan. It coexists with an indigenous Christian minority, Jordan is considered to be among the safest of Arab countries in the Middle East, and has avoided long-term terrorism and instability. The kingdom is also a refuge to thousands of Iraqi Christians fleeing the Islamic State, while Jordan continues to accept refugees, the recent large influx from Syria placed substantial strain on national resources and infrastructure. Jordan is classified as a country of high human development with a middle income economy. The Jordanian economy, one of the smallest economies in the region, is attractive to foreign investors based upon a skilled workforce, the country is a major tourist destination, and also attracts medical tourism due to its well developed health sector. Nonetheless, a lack of resources, large flow of refugees. Jordan is named after the Jordan River, where Jesus is said to have been baptized, the origin of the rivers name is debated, but the most common explanation is that it derives from the word yarad, found in Hebrew, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages. Others regard the name as having an Indo-Aryan origin, combining the words yor and don, another theory is that it is from the Arabic root word wrd, as in people coming to a major source of water. The name Jordan appears in an ancient Egyptian papyrus called Papyrus Anastasi I, the lands of modern-day Jordan were historically called Transjordan, meaning beyond the Jordan River. The name was Arabized into Al-Urdunn during the Muslim conquest of the Levant, during crusader rule, it was called Oultrejordain

37.
Saudi Arabia
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Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south. It is separated from Israel and Egypt by the Gulf of Aqaba and it is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast and most of its terrain consists of arid desert and mountains. The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of four regions, Hejaz, Najd and parts of Eastern Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud and he united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia has since been a monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called the predominant feature of Saudi culture, with its global spread largely financed by the oil and gas trade. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called the Land of the Two Holy Mosques in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the state has a total population of 28.7 million, of which 20 million are Saudi nationals and 8 million are foreigners. The states official language is Arabic, petroleum was discovered on 3 March 1938 and followed up by several other finds in the Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia has since become the worlds largest oil producer and exporter, controlling the second largest oil reserves. The kingdom is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy with a high Human Development Index and is the only Arab country to be part of the G-20 major economies. However, the economy of Saudi Arabia is the least diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the state has attracted criticism for its treatment of women and use of capital punishment. Saudi Arabia is an autocracy, has the fourth highest military expenditure in the world. Saudi Arabia is considered a regional and middle power, in addition to the GCC, it is an active member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OPEC. Following the unification of the Hejaz and Nejd kingdoms, the new state was named al-Mamlakah al-ʻArabīyah as-Suʻūdīyah by royal decree on 23 September 1932 by its founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud. Although this is translated as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in English it literally means the Saudi Arab kingdom. Its inclusion expresses the view that the country is the possession of the royal family. Al Saud is an Arabic name formed by adding the word Al, meaning family of or House of, in the case of the Al Saud, this is the father of the dynastys 18th century founder, Muhammad bin Saud. There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 125,000 years ago

38.
Black September
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The civil war determined if Jordan would be ruled by the Palestine Liberation Organisation or the Hashemite monarchy. The war resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, the vast majority Palestinian, armed conflict ended with the expulsion of the PLO leadership and thousands of Palestinian fighters to Lebanon. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in late 1947 led to war, the end of British Mandate. With nationhood, the civil war was transformed into a state conflict between Israel and the Arab states. Egypt, Jordan and Syria, together with forces from Iraq. They took control of the Arab areas, and immediately attacked Israeli forces, the fighting was halted with the UN-mediated 1949 Armistice Agreements, as the remaining areas of former Mandatory Palestine came under the control of Egypt and Transjordan. In 1949, Transjordan officially changed its name to Jordan, in 1950, it annexed the West Bank of the Jordan River, and brought Palestinian representation into Jordanian government. Only one third of the population of the West Bank and Jordan consisted of Jordanians. However, Jordan had provided Palestinians with seats mounting to half the parliament, moshe Shemesh claims that this proved to be a mercurial element in internal Jordanian politics, and played a critical role in the political opposition. The West Bank had become the center of the national and territorial aspects of the Palestinian problem, According to King Hussein, the Palestinian problem spelled life or death for Jordan, and would remain the countrys overriding national security issue. King Hussein feared an independent West Bank under PLO administration would threaten the autonomy of his Hashemite kingdom, the Palestinian factions were supported variously by many Arab governments, most notably Egypts president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who gave political support. The Samu Incident was one such reprisal, Jordan had long maintained secret contacts with Israel concerning peace and security along their border. In June 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the Six-Day War, on 21 March 1968, Israel Defense Forces units entered Jordan and destroyed a PLO base camp in the village of Karameh. The PLO suffered some 200 killed and another 150 taken prisoner,40 Jordanian soldiers were also killed. Israeli casualties stood at 28–33 killed and 69–161 wounded, the Karameh operation highlighted the vulnerability of bases close to the Jordan River, so the PLO moved their bases farther into the mountains, which placed additional strains on their operations. Further Israeli attacks targeted Palestinian militants residing among the Jordanian civilian population, in Palestinian enclaves and refugee camps in Jordan, the Jordanian Police and army were losing their authority. Uniformed PLO militants openly carried weapons, set up checkpoints, the PLO did not live up to the agreement, and instead came to be seen more and more as a state within a state in Jordan. Discipline in the Palestinian militias was often poor, and there was no power to control the different groups

39.
Palestine Liberation Organization
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The Palestine Liberation Organization is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle, with much of its violence aimed at Israeli civilians. The PLO was considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organization until the Madrid Conference in 1991, at its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964, concluding this meeting the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated goal was the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle, the ideology of the PLO was formulated in the founding year 1964 in the Palestinian National Covenant. The document is a combative anti-Zionist statement dedicated to the restoration of the Palestinian homeland and it has no reference to religion. In 1968, the Charter was replaced by a revised version. Until 1993, the only promoted option was armed struggle, from the signing of the Oslo Accords, negotiation and diplomacy became the only official policy. In April 1996, a number of articles, which were inconsistent with the Oslo Accords, were wholly or partially nullified. They demanded that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to their homes and this article was adapted in 1996 to meet the Oslo Accords. Article 20 states, ″The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality, nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own, they are citizens of the states to which they belong″. This article was nullified in 1996, the PLO has always labelled the Palestinian people as Arabs. This was a consequence of the fact that the PLO was an offshoot of the Arab League. It also has an element, as to keep the backing of Arab states. Over the years, the Arab identity remained the stated nature of the Palestinian State and it is a reference to the ″Arab State″ envisioned in the UN Partition Plan. The PLO and its dominating faction Fatah are often contrasted to more religious orientated factions like Hamas, all, however, represent a predominant Muslim population. Practically the whole population of the Territories is Muslim, most of them Sunni, the National Charter has no reference to religion. The draft Constitution, which never materialized, contains the same provisions, at the time, the PLC did not include a single Hamas member

40.
Jordanian Armed Forces
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The Jordanian Armed Forces, also referred to as the Arab Army, are the military forces of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. They consist of the forces, air force, and navy and is under the direct control of the King of Jordan who is the Commander-in-Chief. The current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is Lieutenant General Mahmoud Freihat, first organized army in Jordan was established on 22 October 1920, and was named the Mobile Force, at the time it was 150 men strong. On its third anniversary in 1923, the force was renamed the Arab Legion, by the time Jordan became an independent state in 1946, Arab Legion numbered some 8,000 soldiers in 3 mechanized regiments. In 1956, all British generals were dismissed, and the name was changed into the Jordanian Army. The army fought in wars and battles, mostly against Israel. In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the capture of the West Bank by Jordan, several confrontations followed with Israel, Retribution operations, Six Day War, War of Attrition and Yom Kippor War. Jordan also had to face the PLO and the Syrian Army during the events of Black September, the signing of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty in 1994 ended the state of hostility between the two countries, and allowed them to resume normal functioning. It is today considered to be among the most professional in the region, the first organized army in Jordan was established on 22 October 1920, and was named the Mobile Force, at the time it was 150 man strong under the command of the British Captain Frederick Peake. On its third anniversary, in October 1923, the now 1000 man force was renamed the Arab Legion, in 1939, John Bagot Glubb, better known as Glubb Pasha, became the Legions commander, and continued in office until the dismissal of British officers in March 1956. On 1 April 1926, the Transjordan Frontier Force was formed, consisting of only 150 men, the Jordanian Armed Forces was formed on 1 March 1956 by renaming the Arab Legion. Then-King Hussein wanted at the time to himself from the British and disprove the contention of Arab nationalists that John Glubb. Glubb was dismissed on the date and replaced with Maj. -Gen. Radi Annab, the first Arab commander of the Arab Legion and these have been transformed into a lighter, more mobile forces, based largely on a brigade structure and considered better capable of rapid reaction in emergencies. An armoured division has become the element of a strategic reserve. The main objectives of the Jordanian Armed Forces are, Protect the Kingdom of Jordan borders from any invasion, Protect the people inside the Kingdom and their rights. In order to cope with a range of potential threats. There has been an emphasis on rapid reaction and special forces

41.
Palestinians
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Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the worlds Palestinian population continues to reside in historic Palestine, the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora, the history of a distinct Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars. Palestinian was used to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by Palestinian Arabs in a limited way until World War I, Modern Palestinian identity now encompasses the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period. Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization is an organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before the international community. Since 1978, the United Nations has observed an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as when he speaks of the Syrians of Palestine or Palestinian-Syrians, an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians. Herodotus makes no distinction between the Jews and other inhabitants of Palestine, the Greek word reflects an ancient Eastern Mediterranean-Near Eastern word which was used either as a toponym or ethnonym. In Ancient Egyptian Peleset/Purusati has been conjectured to refer to the Sea Peoples, among Semitic languages, Akkadian Palaštu is used of Philistia and its 4 city states. Biblical Hebrews cognate word Plištim, is usually translated Philistines, the Arabic word Filastin has been used to refer to the region since the time of the earliest medieval Arab geographers. It appears to have used as an Arabic adjectival noun in the region since as early as the 7th century CE. The Arabic newspaper Falasteen, published in Jaffa by Issa and Yusef al-Issa, the first Zionist bank, the Jewish Colonial Trust, was founded at the Second Zionist Congress and incorporated in London in 1899. The JCT was intended to be the instrument of the Zionist Organization. On 27 February 1902, a subsidiary of this Trust called the Anglo-Palestine Company was established in London with the assistance of Zalman David Levontin and this Company was to become the future Bank Leumi. Following the 1948 establishment of Israel, the use and application of the terms Palestine and Palestinian by, for example, the English-language newspaper The Palestine Post, founded by Jews in 1932, changed its name in 1950 to The Jerusalem Post. Jews in Israel and the West Bank today generally identify as Israelis, Arab citizens of Israel identify themselves as Israeli and/or Palestinian and/or Arab. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father – whether in Palestine or outside it – is also a Palestinian. Thus, the Jews of Palestine were/are also included, although limited only to the Jews who had resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion. The Charter also states that Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is a territorial unit. The although the timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement

Nasser at the gates of the Presidential Palace in Damascus in 1958. Nasser was standing with Syrian and Egyptian cabinet members of the UAR. From left to right; Vice President Hawrani, Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, a Vice President, followed by Nasser, Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer, who became Governor of Syria, and Sabri al-Asali, a Vice President. Then stands Fakhir al-Kayyali, the Minister of Economy. Standing to the far right is Bitar. In the middle row, second from left, is Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, the Minister of Interior

A meeting between the Syrian and Egyptian delegations. From left to right: Prime Minister Bitar, head of state Atassi, Egyptian President Nasser, and Aflaq, the Ba'ath Party leader

Hafiz at Cairo Airport in August 1963 being greeted by Nasser. Bitar is standing to the far right

King Hussein after checking an abandoned Israeli tank on 21 March 1968 during the Battle of Karameh. The perceived joint Palestinian-Jordanian victory led to an upsurge in support for the fedayeen in Jordan.